Amidst the foggy night, Roel’s eyes remained on the old man before him as his body stiffened up. Selina and the others sat confused for a moment before realization finally struck them, and they stared at the old man with widened eyes.
“Y-you are… Paul?”
“No, how is that possible?”
Stuart subconsciously retreated two steps out of astonishment. Selina froze up on the spot. Juliana even exclaimed out of incredulity, which was understandable since she was the most familiar with Paul amongst the transfer students due to her frequent visits to the Azure Manor.
However, the one who was the most shaken up was none other than Roel.
Unable to come to terms with the situation, Roel scrutinized the old man from head to toe and eventually found a trace of Paul’s shadow in the old man. But before Roel could ask a question, he suddenly passed out once more.
“Paul? Paul!!” Roel exclaimed anxiously.
The old man appeared to have exerted all of his strength uttering those words, not waking up no matter how many times Roel called for him. The group of four exchanged glances with one another and eventually decided to conduct their own verification.
The current Paul looked nothing like his normal self. His hair had turned completely white, and his face was covered in thick facial hair. His clothes looked like rags dug out from the ground. By the standards of an ordinary human, he looked to be over a hundred years old.
“Roel, is he really… Paul?” Selina asked apprehensively.
“…”
Roel didn’t answer her question right away.
It was rash to assume that the old man was Paul just because they bore a bit of resemblance to each other. The old man had almost no mana, and he had no possession that could verify his identity. It would have been nigh impossible to verify his identity if not for Juliana.
Juliana looked incredibly reluctant, but knowing that there was no other alternative, she nicked the old man’s hand, dabbed her fingernail in his blood, and finally put it in her mouth. Her face instantaneously scrunched up, and she quickly turned to the side and began coughing violently.
“That diabolical taste! It can’t be anyone but him!” Juliana cried out with an awful look.
She was certain about it because she had once tasted Paul’s blood while fighting him in the Challenger Cup, but her confirmation only brought about a period of silence.
Paul’s current state was indubitably the result of an enemy attack, but such an attack was unheard of in the current era.
Temporal spells were extremely rare on the Sia Continent, to the point that they were thought of as nonexistent for a long time. Furthermore, most temporal spells were deemed to be forbidden spells for a simple reason: The price one had to pay to cast them was simply too great.
Users of temporal spells would usually have to pay a price equivalent to the effect they had produced, and things could easily prove fatal if there was a deviation in the casting of the spell. Not only so, but there were also strict requirements on their invocation and scale.
It had only been half an hour since Roel was alerted to the presence of a Fallen, and it was clearly impossible to reduce Paul to such a state within this short span of time. Even Roel’s Time Devourer didn’t have the ability to siphon time from a person that quickly.
“This is impossible. How could this even happen? Stuart, check his condition!”
“Understood!”
Stuart snapped out of his daze at Roel’s command. He took off his blindfold and started assessing Paul from head to toe. He was using an ability different from his long-range detection skills from earlier, judging by how his eyes were glowing faintly green. He made sure to double confirm Paul’s condition before turning toward Roel with a distressed look.
“His internal organs have become dysfunctional and his mana flow has stalled to a halt. His internal condition matches that of an ailing old man. It isn’t just a superficial transformation; he has indeed turned into a dying old man.”
“…”
“You must be kidding me…”
Stuart’s update left Roel and the others horrified.
In particular, Selina and Juliana’s faces paled at the sight of an acquaintance languishing in such an appalling manner. For youngsters who were at the peak of their youth, having their time robbed from them and undergoing rapid aging was the most frightening way to die.
None of them wanted to venture any further into the enigmatic and sinister fog, but Roel didn’t issue the order to retreat. In the first place, their key responsibility as the auxiliary team was to reinforce the main team should things go awry, but more than that, Roel didn’t think that it was possible for them to retreat anymore.
“We won’t be able to make it out in time even if we retreat now. It took only half an hour for Paul to be reduced to this state. If we can’t escape from the fog within half an hour’s time, it’s almost certain that the enemy will catch up to us. There’s only one way for us to survive and save Paul, and that’s to proceed ahead and defeat the enemy,” Roel spoke after careful consideration.
Selina and the others slowly regained their composure upon hearing those words. Being in such a despairing situation stoked their tenacity to beat the enemies and survive this ordeal. After an exchange of gazes, they quickly began discussing a plan.
Since they had recognized Paul, they couldn’t possibly leave him to the lurch. Not to mention, Paul was their only source of information regarding what had happened.
“If the rate of aging is equal for everyone, it’s likely that everyone other than the young Paul and Lilian is already…” murmured Selina.
“That’s hard to say. Some of them might have a higher level of immunity to this enigmatic spell. Paul was also the weakest one in the main team,” refuted Roel.
“It looks like Paul was trying to break out of this encirclement to gather reinforcement…” Stuart analyzed.
With Stuart carrying the unconscious Paul on his back, the group resumed their journey. Under Roel’s lead, it didn’t take long before the outlines of the abandoned Marlin Town appeared amidst the thick fog. However, the group’s complexion only grew more livid.
There was no sound.
From the moment they met Paul till now, they hadn’t heard even the slightest sound of combat.
A party that was ambushed in the fog would have retaliated with everything they had, especially one that was filled with high transcendents. Their battle would have surely caused a huge commotion, whether they intended for it to or not.
In other words, the current absence of sound meant that the battle had already concluded.
Knowing that, it couldn’t be helped that Selina and the others were on the edge. Even Roel was unable to fully keep his composure. Even so, he didn’t lose hope as he knew that Lilian was somewhere inside the fog.
He had great confidence in Lilian’s fighting prowess. It was impossible for her to be defeated that quickly even if she was faced with an Origin Level 1 transcendent. That much could be seen from her previous encounter with Magician King Priestley Maxwell.
It’s not too late yet. There’s still hope.
Clutching onto his faith, Roel and the others finally arrived at the entrance of Marlin Town. As one would have expected from an abandoned town, the houses were dilapidated and the streets were covered in overgrown weed. The thick fog only made the place more unsettling, as if some sort of eldritch horror would suddenly lunge at them.
Even with the sharpened eyes of a high transcendent, Roel could only see within a ten meters radius. The deathly silence wasn’t providing him with any extra information either. They couldn’t quickly search the town under such circumstances, so Roel could only turn to his scout for information.
“Stuart, are you able to locate them?”
“…”
There was no response even after several seconds passed, so Roel turned around to take a look. What came into his sight were two women vigilantly scanning the surroundings… and no Stuart.
“!”
Roel’s pupils widened in horror. Noticing his reaction, Selina and Juliana also quickly turned their heads over, only to be shocked by the disappearance of their team member.
“Selina! Where’s Stuart? What happened?” Roel questioned Selina, who was in charge of protecting their backline.
“I-I don’t know! He was just right behind me!” Selina shook her head in a fluster.
“Did he fall behind?” Juliana asked with a pale face.
Roel gritted his teeth. He immediately channeled his mana and manifested a colossal crimson skeleton giant around him. Grandar’s powerful presence eased Selina and Juliana’s anxiety a bit. The group immediately turned around and headed back in the direction they came from.
Ten minutes later, Roel pressed his back against a wall and massaged his forehead as he tried to analyze the current situation. Beside him, Selina and Juliana were leaning stiffly against his left and right shoulder respectively.
Despite their intimate posture, their actions were devoid of any romantic intention. This was the solution they had come up with in this emergency so as to ensure they could feel each other’s existence.
It couldn’t be helped since their search for Stuart yielded no results.
They retraced their footsteps for around a hundred meters, but there was only white fog and the screeching of the night gale. There was no sign of Stuart at all. There were no traces of battle or spatial magic, but Stuart and Paul were nowhere to be seen. It was as if they had been spirited away.
“H-how could this be possible? Stuart didn’t even make the slightest noise. No matter how powerful the opponent is, it shouldn’t have been possible for him to be taken away without any warning…”
“A faint trace of Paul’s blood is still lingering in the vicinity, which goes to say that they were still safely standing there just a moment ago. How could they have disappeared just like that? Shit! What the hell happened?”
“Calm down!”
Both Selina and Juliana had fallen into a state of terror after failing to find any hint of where Stuart and Paul had disappeared to. Neither of them was a coward afraid of confronting a powerful enemy. On the contrary, they had been brainwashed by the knight’s code of chivalry from a young age and saw it an honor to die in battle.
However, the current situation was very different from that.
What they saw in this foggy night town was not a powerful adversary but incomprehensible horror. From Paul’s rapid aging to Stuart’s disappearance, these were unexplainable phenomena that would have only otherwise happened in a nightmare. Till now, they hadn’t even spotted the shadow of their enemy.
Roel could feel the two ladies trembling on his shoulders. Their breathing had become ragged, and their faces frighteningly pale. He knew that they were in a grave situation.
No matter how powerful Selina and Juliana were, they were still youths. It was only normal for them to be frightened given the sinister events they had encountered thus far, but the problem was that it had started to affect their cognitive ability. They had shut down their minds and were leaving it all to their instincts, but giving up on thinking was the last thing they should do in this eerie town.
Roel massaged his temples and forced himself to calm down. He quickly analyzed the situation before issuing a new order—Continue searching for the main team to join forces with them as soon as possible, and then discuss a counterattack.
He thought that it was unwise for them to do nothing in a place of danger, especially when they had no idea what had happened here. Staying put would just make it easier for their enemy to locate and make a move on them.
Selina and Juliana decided to heed his order, and the three of them ventured deeper into Marlin Town. Thanks to Juliana’s superior senses in the night, they were able to quickly locate the main team’s campsite.
It was an abandoned building that appeared to have previously belonged to the town’s mayor, judging from its size. Constructed out of stones, it was in a much better condition than the other dilapidated buildings around the town.
The result of Roel and the others’ investigation of this building was disappointing.
There was no one at all.
Judging from how all sorts of things are scattered on the floor, the main team was probably caught off guard by the enemy and had to flee in a fluster. The situation was probably so tight that they didn’t even have time to inform us about the situation.
As for their outcome… they probably vanished into the fog just like Paul and Stuart.
“Looks like there isn’t any reason for me to hold back anymore,” muttered Roel.
Knowing that the ones he was supposed to save were unlikely to be around anymore, Roel made up his mind and began releasing a huge surge of frost aura. The surrounding temperature immediately plummeted, and the ceiling and walls were soon coated with a layer of frost. However, the frost aura didn’t stop there and continued spreading outward.
It was almost impossible to discern between the spreading frost aura and the white fog.
Everything that had happened in Marlin Town so far could easily make a person’s blood run cold, and a huge contributing reason behind that was the thick white fog obscuring the truth.
Roel had no idea whether this fog was natural or man-made, but he believed that the omnidirectional attack via his frost aura would force his enemy to reveal themselves. Just as he had thought, there was an immediate response from the silent town.
Powerful pulsations of mana suddenly rippled from the town center and swiftly engulfed the entire area. It drew Selina and Juliana’s attention right away. It was an unfamiliar aura, but its overflowing malevolence was more than enough to make anyone put up their guard right away. Tight frowns appeared on their faces.
It’s the aura of a Fallen!
That was the judgment Roel made right away. The aura felt disgusting and repulsive as if it was some sort of decomposing carcass, but he was able to sense something else in it that the other two ladies couldn’t.
This is anger? No, it would be more apt to call it hatred. It doesn’t seem to be solely directed toward my provocation. It’s more like a response toward Glacier’s Touch and the power of the Crown’s Stones…
“Is this hatred directed toward the Mother Goddess?” murmured Roel.
All of a sudden, a lanky but hunched old man appeared at the other end of the fog. He glared at Roel with intense animosity. In his hand was a fog lamp that cast a hazy light in front of him.
“You’ve finally appeared!”
“Get him!”
Having finally found an enemy after wandering so long in this suffocating environment, both Selina and Juliana made their move on the old man right away.
The lurking shadows morphed into countless sharp blades that darted toward the old man. Similarly, Selina channeled her Chaos Origin Attribute into her glowing sword, imbuing it with the power to slice through any armor.
The two women executed their strongest moves right away, and Roel was prepared to coordinate with their attack. That very moment, however, his ancient gods suddenly shouted through their windows of connection.
“That fog lamp!!”
“No! Run away!”
Grandar and Artasia’s voices sounded at the same time, but it was already too late. The fog lamp held in the lanky old man’s hand suddenly shimmered, and a blinding burst of light reminiscent of the sun bombarded the surroundings.
Everything before Roel’s eyes was drowned out by the light, and his consciousness started to blur. He felt as if his soul had been blasted from his body into the sky.
Under the guidance of the blinding light, his soul streaked across mountains and rivers at an unbelievable speed. He spotted the fortresses of the eastern border and the warring humans and deviants at Tark Prairie, but those, too, vanished in the blink of an eye.
Eventually, he arrived at an obscure cavern.
It was an endless cavern cloaked in darkness. Waves of ominous and malevolent auras rippled out from its depth as if all of the evil in the world was hidden within it. The moment Roel appeared, the cavern came to life and began contracting on him like he was some sort of delicious prey.
Roel’s consciousness began turning fuzzy.
He could vaguely hear Grandar, Peytra, and Artasia’s shoutings, and he tried his best to pull himself together, but it was all in vain. His thoughts were slowly freezing up, and all he could see was darkness.
Just as Roel was about to fall into the abyss, a pair of luminescent golden eyes lit up amidst the darkness. His mind immediately cleared up and his eyes shot open.
“!”
As if his soul had reached the limit of its travel, he began to ricochet backward. The scenery seemed to retreat behind him, the pitch-black cavern, Tark Prairie, the fortresses, mountains, and rivers, all the way until he returned to the mountainous town. Then, a voice echoed in his ears.
“Roel!”
Amidst the foggy Marlin Town, under the seemingly all-consuming fog lamp, a black-haired woman with amethyst eyes suddenly appeared. She picked up the young man collapsed on the floor, and under the chorale of her spatial magicians, their silhouettes flickered and vanished into thin air.
Amidst the foggy night, Roel’s eyes remained on the old man before him as his body stiffened up. Selina and the others sat confused for a moment before realization finally struck them, and they stared at the old man with widened eyes.
“Y-you are… Paul?”
“No, how is that possible?”
Stuart subconsciously retreated two steps out of astonishment. Selina froze up on the spot. Juliana even exclaimed out of incredulity, which was understandable since she was the most familiar with Paul amongst the transfer students due to her frequent visits to the Azure Manor.
However, the one who was the most shaken up was none other than Roel.
Unable to come to terms with the situation, Roel scrutinized the old man from head to toe and eventually found a trace of Paul’s shadow in the old man. But before Roel could ask a question, he suddenly passed out once more.
“Paul? Paul!!” Roel exclaimed anxiously.
The old man appeared to have exerted all of his strength uttering those words, not waking up no matter how many times Roel called for him. The group of four exchanged glances with one another and eventually decided to conduct their own verification.
The current Paul looked nothing like his normal self. His hair had turned completely white, and his face was covered in thick facial hair. His clothes looked like rags dug out from the ground. By the standards of an ordinary human, he looked to be over a hundred years old.
“Roel, is he really… Paul?” Selina asked apprehensively.
“…”
Roel didn’t answer her question right away.
It was rash to assume that the old man was Paul just because they bore a bit of resemblance to each other. The old man had almost no mana, and he had no possession that could verify his identity. It would have been nigh impossible to verify his identity if not for Juliana.
Juliana looked incredibly reluctant, but knowing that there was no other alternative, she nicked the old man’s hand, dabbed her fingernail in his blood, and finally put it in her mouth. Her face instantaneously scrunched up, and she quickly turned to the side and began coughing violently.
“That diabolical taste! It can’t be anyone but him!” Juliana cried out with an awful look.
She was certain about it because she had once tasted Paul’s blood while fighting him in the Challenger Cup, but her confirmation only brought about a period of silence.
Paul’s current state was indubitably the result of an enemy attack, but such an attack was unheard of in the current era.
Temporal spells were extremely rare on the Sia Continent, to the point that they were thought of as nonexistent for a long time. Furthermore, most temporal spells were deemed to be forbidden spells for a simple reason: The price one had to pay to cast them was simply too great.
Users of temporal spells would usually have to pay a price equivalent to the effect they had produced, and things could easily prove fatal if there was a deviation in the casting of the spell. Not only so, but there were also strict requirements on their invocation and scale.
It had only been half an hour since Roel was alerted to the presence of a Fallen, and it was clearly impossible to reduce Paul to such a state within this short span of time. Even Roel’s Time Devourer didn’t have the ability to siphon time from a person that quickly.
“This is impossible. How could this even happen? Stuart, check his condition!”
“Understood!”
Stuart snapped out of his daze at Roel’s command. He took off his blindfold and started assessing Paul from head to toe. He was using an ability different from his long-range detection skills from earlier, judging by how his eyes were glowing faintly green. He made sure to double confirm Paul’s condition before turning toward Roel with a distressed look.
“His internal organs have become dysfunctional and his mana flow has stalled to a halt. His internal condition matches that of an ailing old man. It isn’t just a superficial transformation; he has indeed turned into a dying old man.”
“…”
“You must be kidding me…”
Stuart’s update left Roel and the others horrified.
In particular, Selina and Juliana’s faces paled at the sight of an acquaintance languishing in such an appalling manner. For youngsters who were at the peak of their youth, having their time robbed from them and undergoing rapid aging was the most frightening way to die.
None of them wanted to venture any further into the enigmatic and sinister fog, but Roel didn’t issue the order to retreat. In the first place, their key responsibility as the auxiliary team was to reinforce the main team should things go awry, but more than that, Roel didn’t think that it was possible for them to retreat anymore.
“We won’t be able to make it out in time even if we retreat now. It took only half an hour for Paul to be reduced to this state. If we can’t escape from the fog within half an hour’s time, it’s almost certain that the enemy will catch up to us. There’s only one way for us to survive and save Paul, and that’s to proceed ahead and defeat the enemy,” Roel spoke after careful consideration.
Selina and the others slowly regained their composure upon hearing those words. Being in such a despairing situation stoked their tenacity to beat the enemies and survive this ordeal. After an exchange of gazes, they quickly began discussing a plan.
Since they had recognized Paul, they couldn’t possibly leave him to the lurch. Not to mention, Paul was their only source of information regarding what had happened.
“If the rate of aging is equal for everyone, it’s likely that everyone other than the young Paul and Lilian is already…” murmured Selina.
“That’s hard to say. Some of them might have a higher level of immunity to this enigmatic spell. Paul was also the weakest one in the main team,” refuted Roel.
“It looks like Paul was trying to break out of this encirclement to gather reinforcement…” Stuart analyzed.
With Stuart carrying the unconscious Paul on his back, the group resumed their journey. Under Roel’s lead, it didn’t take long before the outlines of the abandoned Marlin Town appeared amidst the thick fog. However, the group’s complexion only grew more livid.
There was no sound.
From the moment they met Paul till now, they hadn’t heard even the slightest sound of combat.
A party that was ambushed in the fog would have retaliated with everything they had, especially one that was filled with high transcendents. Their battle would have surely caused a huge commotion, whether they intended for it to or not.
In other words, the current absence of sound meant that the battle had already concluded.
Knowing that, it couldn’t be helped that Selina and the others were on the edge. Even Roel was unable to fully keep his composure. Even so, he didn’t lose hope as he knew that Lilian was somewhere inside the fog.
He had great confidence in Lilian’s fighting prowess. It was impossible for her to be defeated that quickly even if she was faced with an Origin Level 1 transcendent. That much could be seen from her previous encounter with Magician King Priestley Maxwell.
It’s not too late yet. There’s still hope.
Clutching onto his faith, Roel and the others finally arrived at the entrance of Marlin Town. As one would have expected from an abandoned town, the houses were dilapidated and the streets were covered in overgrown weed. The thick fog only made the place more unsettling, as if some sort of eldritch horror would suddenly lunge at them.
Even with the sharpened eyes of a high transcendent, Roel could only see within a ten meters radius. The deathly silence wasn’t providing him with any extra information either. They couldn’t quickly search the town under such circumstances, so Roel could only turn to his scout for information.
“Stuart, are you able to locate them?”
“…”
There was no response even after several seconds passed, so Roel turned around to take a look. What came into his sight were two women vigilantly scanning the surroundings… and no Stuart.
“!”
Roel’s pupils widened in horror. Noticing his reaction, Selina and Juliana also quickly turned their heads over, only to be shocked by the disappearance of their team member.
“Selina! Where’s Stuart? What happened?” Roel questioned Selina, who was in charge of protecting their backline.
“I-I don’t know! He was just right behind me!” Selina shook her head in a fluster.
“Did he fall behind?” Juliana asked with a pale face.
Roel gritted his teeth. He immediately channeled his mana and manifested a colossal crimson skeleton giant around him. Grandar’s powerful presence eased Selina and Juliana’s anxiety a bit. The group immediately turned around and headed back in the direction they came from.
Ten minutes later, Roel pressed his back against a wall and massaged his forehead as he tried to analyze the current situation. Beside him, Selina and Juliana were leaning stiffly against his left and right shoulder respectively.
Despite their intimate posture, their actions were devoid of any romantic intention. This was the solution they had come up with in this emergency so as to ensure they could feel each other’s existence.
It couldn’t be helped since their search for Stuart yielded no results.
They retraced their footsteps for around a hundred meters, but there was only white fog and the screeching of the night gale. There was no sign of Stuart at all. There were no traces of battle or spatial magic, but Stuart and Paul were nowhere to be seen. It was as if they had been spirited away.
“H-how could this be possible? Stuart didn’t even make the slightest noise. No matter how powerful the opponent is, it shouldn’t have been possible for him to be taken away without any warning…”
“A faint trace of Paul’s blood is still lingering in the vicinity, which goes to say that they were still safely standing there just a moment ago. How could they have disappeared just like that? Shit! What the hell happened?”
“Calm down!”
Both Selina and Juliana had fallen into a state of terror after failing to find any hint of where Stuart and Paul had disappeared to. Neither of them was a coward afraid of confronting a powerful enemy. On the contrary, they had been brainwashed by the knight’s code of chivalry from a young age and saw it an honor to die in battle.
However, the current situation was very different from that.
What they saw in this foggy night town was not a powerful adversary but incomprehensible horror. From Paul’s rapid aging to Stuart’s disappearance, these were unexplainable phenomena that would have only otherwise happened in a nightmare. Till now, they hadn’t even spotted the shadow of their enemy.
Roel could feel the two ladies trembling on his shoulders. Their breathing had become ragged, and their faces frighteningly pale. He knew that they were in a grave situation.
No matter how powerful Selina and Juliana were, they were still youths. It was only normal for them to be frightened given the sinister events they had encountered thus far, but the problem was that it had started to affect their cognitive ability. They had shut down their minds and were leaving it all to their instincts, but giving up on thinking was the last thing they should do in this eerie town.
Roel massaged his temples and forced himself to calm down. He quickly analyzed the situation before issuing a new order—Continue searching for the main team to join forces with them as soon as possible, and then discuss a counterattack.
He thought that it was unwise for them to do nothing in a place of danger, especially when they had no idea what had happened here. Staying put would just make it easier for their enemy to locate and make a move on them.
Selina and Juliana decided to heed his order, and the three of them ventured deeper into Marlin Town. Thanks to Juliana’s superior senses in the night, they were able to quickly locate the main team’s campsite.
It was an abandoned building that appeared to have previously belonged to the town’s mayor, judging from its size. Constructed out of stones, it was in a much better condition than the other dilapidated buildings around the town.
The result of Roel and the others’ investigation of this building was disappointing.
There was no one at all.
Judging from how all sorts of things are scattered on the floor, the main team was probably caught off guard by the enemy and had to flee in a fluster. The situation was probably so tight that they didn’t even have time to inform us about the situation.
As for their outcome… they probably vanished into the fog just like Paul and Stuart.
“Looks like there isn’t any reason for me to hold back anymore,” muttered Roel.
Knowing that the ones he was supposed to save were unlikely to be around anymore, Roel made up his mind and began releasing a huge surge of frost aura. The surrounding temperature immediately plummeted, and the ceiling and walls were soon coated with a layer of frost. However, the frost aura didn’t stop there and continued spreading outward.
It was almost impossible to discern between the spreading frost aura and the white fog.
Everything that had happened in Marlin Town so far could easily make a person’s blood run cold, and a huge contributing reason behind that was the thick white fog obscuring the truth.
Roel had no idea whether this fog was natural or man-made, but he believed that the omnidirectional attack via his frost aura would force his enemy to reveal themselves. Just as he had thought, there was an immediate response from the silent town.
Powerful pulsations of mana suddenly rippled from the town center and swiftly engulfed the entire area. It drew Selina and Juliana’s attention right away. It was an unfamiliar aura, but its overflowing malevolence was more than enough to make anyone put up their guard right away. Tight frowns appeared on their faces.
It’s the aura of a Fallen!
That was the judgment Roel made right away. The aura felt disgusting and repulsive as if it was some sort of decomposing carcass, but he was able to sense something else in it that the other two ladies couldn’t.
This is anger? No, it would be more apt to call it hatred. It doesn’t seem to be solely directed toward my provocation. It’s more like a response toward Glacier’s Touch and the power of the Crown’s Stones…
“Is this hatred directed toward the Mother Goddess?” murmured Roel.
All of a sudden, a lanky but hunched old man appeared at the other end of the fog. He glared at Roel with intense animosity. In his hand was a fog lamp that cast a hazy light in front of him.
“You’ve finally appeared!”
“Get him!”
Having finally found an enemy after wandering so long in this suffocating environment, both Selina and Juliana made their move on the old man right away.
The lurking shadows morphed into countless sharp blades that darted toward the old man. Similarly, Selina channeled her Chaos Origin Attribute into her glowing sword, imbuing it with the power to slice through any armor.
The two women executed their strongest moves right away, and Roel was prepared to coordinate with their attack. That very moment, however, his ancient gods suddenly shouted through their windows of connection.
“That fog lamp!!”
“No! Run away!”
Grandar and Artasia’s voices sounded at the same time, but it was already too late. The fog lamp held in the lanky old man’s hand suddenly shimmered, and a blinding burst of light reminiscent of the sun bombarded the surroundings.
Everything before Roel’s eyes was drowned out by the light, and his consciousness started to blur. He felt as if his soul had been blasted from his body into the sky.
Under the guidance of the blinding light, his soul streaked across mountains and rivers at an unbelievable speed. He spotted the fortresses of the eastern border and the warring humans and deviants at Tark Prairie, but those, too, vanished in the blink of an eye.
Eventually, he arrived at an obscure cavern.
It was an endless cavern cloaked in darkness. Waves of ominous and malevolent auras rippled out from its depth as if all of the evil in the world was hidden within it. The moment Roel appeared, the cavern came to life and began contracting on him like he was some sort of delicious prey.
Roel’s consciousness began turning fuzzy.
He could vaguely hear Grandar, Peytra, and Artasia’s shoutings, and he tried his best to pull himself together, but it was all in vain. His thoughts were slowly freezing up, and all he could see was darkness.
Just as Roel was about to fall into the abyss, a pair of luminescent golden eyes lit up amidst the darkness. His mind immediately cleared up and his eyes shot open.
“!”
As if his soul had reached the limit of its travel, he began to ricochet backward. The scenery seemed to retreat behind him, the pitch-black cavern, Tark Prairie, the fortresses, mountains, and rivers, all the way until he returned to the mountainous town. Then, a voice echoed in his ears.
“Roel!”
Amidst the foggy Marlin Town, under the seemingly all-consuming fog lamp, a black-haired woman with amethyst eyes suddenly appeared. She picked up the young man collapsed on the floor, and under the chorale of her spatial magicians, their silhouettes flickered and vanished into thin air.
